264 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 3, 1896. 
The visitor introduced himself as a hunter living in a 
large catboat anchored out in the channel. He said he 
was hunting for the market and needed a partner, and 
would like to have me join him, share and share alike, 
paying half the boat rent and expenses and dividing the 
profits as well. I took him right up, and then and there 
became a wicked market hunter without any compunc- 
tion. I put my box of shells and my roll of blankets in 
the cabin of his boat, and bid my German friends good- 
by for a time. 
I found my new acquaintance was an expert, having 
put in his life hunting ducks in the winter and alligators 
in summer. H 9 showed me more about rigging out for 
ducks than I should ever have learned in any other way. 
That afternoon, it being a poor day for birds, he helped 
me build a little brush blind in a good place, just big 
enough to conceal a man stooping over. He said the 
birds would come to such a little blind better than to a 
boat blind. We built the blind and left it. He had killed 
a fine lot of game, including seven big geese that had 
come to his duck decoys, and we sailed away for town 
with his birds, where the game dealer jumped at them. 
Then we put in a supply of grub and ice and water, and 
some charcoal to cook with, and cleared for the ducking 
grounds again. We struck favorable weather conditions 
the first thing. No sooner had we anchored under the lee 
of some islands than one of the terrible "northers" of the 
country came on. It blew great guns all night. "We 
won't do a thing to 'em to-morrow," said my new chum. 
Daylight found us in our little blinds with fifty decoys 
apiece set out, and sure enough the birds workeii to the 
queen's taste. The gale seemed to have blown the wits 
out of their heads, and flock after flock would sight our 
outfits and swing in, leaving some of their number behind 
vhen they went. Of tener pairs and singles would come to 
<tts. When they saemed in doubt we would give them a call, 
which usually fetched them. I kept fetching ducks in 
and hanging them in strings to the crotched stick of my 
blind till I could hardly get in myself. I could see ducks 
dropping pretty regularly to my partner's fire a quarter of 
a mile away, and sure enough this was our busy day. 
About 2 o'clock we began to get fearfully hungry, and 
first he took up and then I, and got our boats and loaded 
our ducks in and rowed out to the big boat to cook a bite 
to eat. I hadn't counted my birds, but I thought I had 
enough. Wuen I drew near the boat I spied a big heap 
of ducks on her deck, and sang out to know how many 
toy chum had. "Forty-four,"8aid he. "Looks like you'd 
been killin' ducks too!" The bow of my skiff did look 
pretty full, and I commenced to count them out on deck. 
T found I had just fifty birds, and was rather tickled to 
have beaten the lad at his own trade. 
We hunted together for more than a month, sailing 
wherever we chose, where game was thickest. It was the 
pleasantest winter I ever put in, and I gained just 251bs. 
in weight, I was much surprised when the scales indi- 
cated j ast aOOlbs. in the spring, I may bea sordid market 
hunter, but I am going to repeat the experience as closely 
as may be the coming winter, and if some decent felljow 
wants to j lin me, let him write me at the Forest and 
Stream office and find out the particulars. 
Mine host Gould, of Chatham, Mass., has spoken about 
going with me; but he wants to get his mind made up 
pretty quick, for these frosty nights make my feet itch 
about this time of the year. Ipsarraka. 
AN ELK HUNT THE OLYMPICS. 
"Hoop-e-eI Won't nobody come out and fight me? 
I'm a wild and dusty ranger from the Tuscaroras. Hoop- 
e-e! Won't nobody come out and fight me?" 
This, lustily yelled out at daybreak on a fine, clear Sep- 
tember morning, roused us from our slumbers, and tum- 
bling out we saw long-limbed, long-whiskered Doc stand- 
ing on a big rock drying himself after a plunge into the 
icy mountain stream that roared and tumbled past our 
bivouac. 
We were encamped on a hogback or spur of one of the 
ranges of the Olympic Mountains, on the main divide be- 
tween the waters running westerly to the Pacific and 
those running in the opposite direction to Puget Sound, 
or more truly Hood Canal, a long, narrow branch of the 
Sound. For two days with pack ponies, or cayuses, as 
they are locally termed, we had been plodding upward, 
and now, at an elevation of between 6,000 and 7,000ft., 
we looked down the narrow valley of the Skokomish 
River — our path on the upward journey — and across at 
the great glacier in which the main fork of the river 
takes its source. There were four of us, all told, and we 
wei'e after elk, or wapiti, primarily, and secondarily after 
all the fun we could get in exploring the vast and gigan- 
tic primeval forests of the Pacific slope and climbing the 
rugged, rooky fastnesses of our most northwestern range. 
Doc, whose vociferous pleasantry had aroused us from 
the land of dreams, was an old sportsman who had in his 
time slain all the big game of the States with the excep- 
tion of the elk, and when we took steamer at Seattle — the 
initial point of our journey — he had said: "Boys, just give 
me one decent shot at one of the big feUows, and I will 
come back happy." This was to be our first day actually 
in pursuit of game, and of cours3 we were all anxious to 
be off. Tommy and the writer had each had the good 
fortune on previous expeditions to bag the noble game, 
and therefore it was understood that Djc or Sport was to 
have the shot if possible. We wanted an elk, but we did 
not want more than one, aa we could not find use for 
more. 
Sport was a big, fat, jolly fellow from Illinois, a famous 
chicken shot, but a man who had never before seen a hill 
any higher than Chicago and vicinity produces. He 
amused us greatly on the upward trip, and really had a 
pretty tough time of it, for, of course, he was forced to 
use muscles that bad practically become extinct from lack 
of U3e. He was the owner at home of many fine horses 
and greeted the disreputable-looking cayuses, which the 
genial proprietor of the Cushman House at Lake Cush- 
man had furnished m with grunts of disgust. These 
mountain-bred ponies are not beasts of beauty, but in dis- 
position they are angels compared to the broncho of the 
plains, and it is marvelous where the little wiry chaps will 
go with a pack of from 150 to SOOlbs. I well remember 
Sport's surprise and comical ej aculations at the first sight 
, he obtained of the climbing powers of our faithful beasts. 
He was in the van, gun on shoulder, ready to shoot the 
first game that appeared, but as the rest of us, who having 
been several years in the Puget Sound country were con- 
sidered "moss backs," very well knew that be would not 
meet anything mora formidable than a yellow jacket's 
nest in the heavy timber, we did not grudge him the post 
of honor. The trail, after winding along the river bank, 
suddenly broke abruptly to the left and went straight up 
a rocky butte that projected into the stream. Sport came 
to the foot of this and stopped. Tommy, who came next, 
behind two of the cayuses, shouted: "Go ahead I What's 
the matter?" 
"Where do we go now?" queried Sport. Being 
answered silently by the sight of Tommy's finger pointing 
straight up the butte. he said: "That's all right, but where 
do the horses go? ' Tom still continued to point up the 
precipitous ascent. "What there?" quoth Sport in great 
scorn, "you must take me for a blamed fool, sirl" 
"Gst out of the way," answered Tommy, "and I'll show 
you who is the fool." , 
Sport stood aside to let our little cavalcade pass, and 
gazed with open-mouthed astonishment at our sure-footed 
little beasts as they clambered and struggled up the steep 
defile. He took out his red bandanna, wiped the perspira- 
tion from his brow, gave an ejaculation of abject wonder 
and sat down on a rock. All the rest of that day he 
walked behind one of the mares, a spotted beast who re- 
joiced in the name of Calico, and to our great amusement 
we' could hear him mumbling to himself: "Wonderful! 
sublimel That mare would be worth a fortune in 
Chicago." But we could never find out in what way 
Sport could make a fortune out of her in the Eastern city, 
for he thought that we were guying him and shut up like 
a clam when interrogated. 
Doc's challenge had banished all sleep from our eyes, 
and in a short time three of the party were off in as 
many different directions, hunting for signs of game. 
Having badly chafed feet, I remained in camp to get 
things in order and gather a supply of wood, not a par- 
ticularly easy task, as we were close to timber line, which 
is very low in these latitudes. By sundown all had re- 
turned empty handed, but wildly enthusiastic over the 
superb country and the quantity of sign they had seen. 
Tommy got a glimpse of a couple of brown bears scram- 
bling up a rock slide some 400 or .500yds. away, but could 
not get close enough to them to risk a shot. 
Poor Sport was pretty nearly dead, for, not being ac- 
customed to such rough travel, he had spent a large por- 
tion of the day picking himself up off the ground. Doc 
brought in a whistling marmot, a Western specimen of 
the woodchuck family that lives on our high ridges. This 
animal reaches a weight of 50lbs., combines the wood- 
chuck and prairie dog in his appearance and habits, and 
whistles like a steam calliope at all times of the day and 
upon all occasions. They are often a perfect nuisance 
in that they warn game which the hunter is endeavoring 
to stalk. When properly cooked, the marmot is really 
very good eating, if one can only get the woodchuck idea 
out of his head. Upon my suggesting a marmot stew 
friend Sport gave a snort of disgust ; but I made up my 
mind that he would eat and enjoy the very dish at which 
he scouted before our trip was ended. 
As we lay in front of our cheerful camp-fire, reclining 
on couches of redolent fir boughs — but why go over to 
the same old story. Those who have "been there" will 
fully understand the bliss of a pipe after a long day's 
tramp, and the joys of a camp-fire reverie; and to those 
poor unfortunates who have not as yet tasted the joys of 
woods life I ca u only say that they have missed more 
than they dream of. 
Before sunrise the next morning we were off, Tommy 
and Sport, Doc and I. We followed a Jong ridge to the 
eastward, covered with luxuriant grass and dotted with 
wild flowers, while in every hollow and cavity lay a 
great bank of snow. Within a mile of camp we came 
upon the fresh sign of a big bull elk, evidently feeding. 
We knew it was fresh because the footprints were plainly 
marked on the dew that had fallen in the early morning, 
and we knew it was a bull because the imprint was a 
large one and the toe marks were much blunter and more 
rounded than a cow elk's hoof would have made. 
We followed the sign down into the timber, breathless 
in expectation — each one undoubtedly thinking the other 
a clumsy brute who made more noise than a barrel of 
monkeys. Luckily for us the elk was working up wind, 
and so we knew that he could not scent us. Down he 
went through the timber below the mountain prairie, 
where it was difficult to track him, as no dew had fallen, 
and even his great weight left but a poor trail behind 
him. Hour after hour we crept along, now across a big 
rock slide, where we would lose the sign altogether for a 
half hour at a time; then into some marshy glade, where 
our quarry had evidently stopped to browse on the swamp 
grass; then along a plateau, where he had torn great strips 
of bark off a cedar with his antlers; and finally long 
after noon we came to the foot of a bluff, almost a preci- 
pice, where apparently the elk had vanished. 
"Great Scott! Scribe," quoth the Doctor, "do you think 
he went up there? ' 
"I guess he must have," said I, utterly at a loss for any 
other explanation. "Wait till I see." 
Clambering up the rooks, I found his tracks on a little 
ledge some 7ft. above the foot of the bluff, so calling to 
the Doctor, he handed me the rifles and then scrambled 
up after me. 
We followed that elk up places where it seemed utterly 
impossible that a. cloven-footed animal of such size could 
go. Ha went up, jumping from ledge to ledge, often 
clearing 6 or 7ft, in perpendicular distance. As Doc ex- 
pressed it, "If any one had told me this morning that an 
elk or anything else without wings could go up that I'd — 
well, they could have won all of my money." 
Finally, breathless, we reached the top, and crawling 
behind a bunch of mountain alder, looked at a great 
Alpine prairie covered with flowers, and there, lying on a 
snow field, not 100yds. from ug, were three big bull elk, 
while one a little to one side was standing up. How 
grandly they looked there in their native wilds, the fore- 
ground of luxuriant grass and wild flowers, the great 
snow field on which they lay, and beyond the rocky crags 
and snow peaks and the blue sky of the heavens. 
Old hunter as he was. Doc gave a gasp — he was white 
as a sheet, but cool as a cucumber. There they were, 
monarchs of all they surveyed, until man with his in- 
fernal repeater had come into their solitudes — and they 
were totally unconscious of our presence or of danger. 
After a few moments in the which to get breath after 
his climb, Doc raised his old rifle, held it steady for a 
moment, and then the flame burst forth and the echo of 
the report reverberated again and again among the sur- 
rounding peaks, 
The standing elk, the one at which he had shot, lifted 
its stumpy tail, but otherwise, so far as we could see, did 
not move ; the other three arose, looked around in the 
greatest astonishment, and soon perceiving the smoke 
slowly drifting away from the shrubs behind which we 
were hidden, fixed their gaze in our dbrection. None of 
the animals evinced any fear, they simply seemed 
astonished. 
"Why, Doc," I whispered, "you must have missed it." 
"By George, it looks like it," he ruefully replied. "But 
how a man could miss a barn door at 90yds, I don't see. 
Look! Look at that elk by the one I shot at." 
I looked, and there I saw what I believe must have 
been the king of the range, a hoary monarch, fully two 
hands taller than any of the others and with a set of 
antlers that I would have given much to have called my 
own. 
"Shoot him. Doc," I exclaimed in excitement. "Hit 
him in the fore shoulder, pretty well down." 
Doc rested his gun on his knee, took a steady, careful 
aim, and was just about to pull the trigger, when happen- 
ing to glance at the first elk shot at, I shouted, "Stop, you 
got the first one." 
True enough, a dark ruby stream was welling down 
the poor brute's foreleg, his legs were spread to keep his 
balance, and the death mist must have been forming 
before his eyes, for he was tottering. He took a few 
steps and then plunged forward on the snow. Tried once 
to rise, but failed, and then with a groan gave up the 
fight and rolled over dead. "Hoop-ee!"' yelled Doc, 
"won't nobody come out and fight me?' as with a 
Comanche war-whoop he ran toward his noble game. 
The other three elk looked at him a moment and then 
trotted off with a slow, swinging stride. Oh, what a 
temptation it was; there we had the chance to get the 
finest set of antlers that ever come out of the Olympics; 
but we already had a thousand pounds of meat for four 
to eat, and thank jroodness, our sportsmanship prevailed 
over our greed and we fired but the one shot. The elk 
the Doctor got was a beauty, with a large and perfect 
head. We straightened him out as well as we could, bled 
and cleaned him, put the liver into our packsacks, and 
with happy hearts hastened campward as the evening 
shadows were already lengthening out in an alarming 
degree. 
We were the first to reach our tent, and at once I pro- 
ceeded to put into effect my fell scheme to make Sport 
eat some marmot. Posting Doc, we made a hearty meal 
from the elk liver and "choke-dog." (For the benefit of 
the uninitiated I will explain that "choke-dog" is baking- 
powder bread.) Then hiding the rest of the liver, I pro- 
ceeded to make a stew of marmot flesh, with rice, pota- 
toes, onions and "dough boys." 
Tommy and Sport shortly turned up. They had seen 
plenty of fresh sign, and Sport swore by all that was holy 
that he had shot a bear which had fallen over a cliff where 
he could not get it. Perhaps he did. We reported much 
the same luck, except that I said that I had shot a year- 
ling doe; that the Doctor and I had dined, but that there 
was some coffee and a steaming stew waiting for them. 
They fell to with a will, and to my intense delight Sport 
looked up and, talking with his mouth full, mumbled, 
"That is the best deer I ever ate. The blacktail must be 
better eating than the red deer of Michigan." 
I waited until they had completed a good meal, and 
then said: "Well, gentlemen, if you have now finished 
your entree of marmot, allow me to present you with the 
dish of the evening — alk liver and onions." 
Sport and Tommy were both much chagrined; but their 
joy at our success overbalanced all other feelings. They 
looked from one to the other of us, and then, seeing Doc's 
complacent smile. Tommy rushed over to him with "Give 
me your paw," etc. , etc. , both in their boisterous camp 
way showing plainly that they were as happy in his suc- 
cess as he himself could be. We were a very merry party 
that night, and told and retold the story of the hunt. The 
next day, after much labor in cutting a trail, we managed 
to get tne cayuses to the elk and packed out his head, the 
hide and all of the meat, so that none was wasted. 
We spent another week in the glorious mountains. 
Tommy and the writer each got a bear — the latter a par- 
ticularly nice one — and many more elk were seen, but we 
let them be. Poor Sport lost some Solbs. in weight, which 
he could easily afford; but beyond grouse did not get any 
game. Regretfully we finally repacked our ponies, which 
had grown fat as butter on the luxuriant forage, started 
on our homeward journey, and the next day were 
warmly greeted by proprietor Putnam, of the Cushman 
House, who is a prince of good fellows. We were able to 
give his guests all the elk meat they could eat and to take 
several fine roasts to our friends in Seattle. Doc has had 
the head mounted and it is now in his office, while the 
great yellow hide, as a rug, covers his lounge. This year 
we hope to be together again in the wilds, and if we have 
as much fun and as good success will indeed be lucky. 
Wapiti, 
CHICKEN SHOOTING PAST AND 
PRESENT. 
In the Old Days. 
Chicago, Sept. 13. — In the old days, when prairie chif^k- 
ens were abundant in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Da- 
kota, we used to go after them in somewhat different 
fashion from that which is customary to-day. I remem- 
ber when I was a boy, about the time the muzzleloader 
was becoming antique, although still there were some 
men who thought a muzzleloader would "shoot harder" 
than a breechloader, there were any number of these 
birds close about the little town in central Iowa where I 
then lived. Very often my father would go and kill a 
few dozen of them within two or three miles of the town, 
and I recall that sometimes I would take the old gun and 
go out after school and get a few birds within walking 
distance. Then I remember also how it gradually became 
necessary to go further and further away from home to 
get any shooting. By the time I was a young man home 
from college it was our custom to go further north for 
our hunting, into the wilder counties of Marshall, Web- 
ster, Hamilton or Wright, which then were just settling 
up and contained great bodies of unbroken prairie land, 
where the chickens had their hatching grounds. When 
we found occasion to go on a chicken hunt — and I am 
not sure that we ever thought whether or not there could 
bs such a thing as a game law to regulate our goings— we 
would get together a camp outfit, a wagon and a team, 
and start for a 4riye of sixty to eighty miles to the npr^iii 
